MLM Leadership – The Real Game For Home Business Success

We are going to have a look at the issue of leadership in network marketing from three very distinct angles and how they relate to you.

If you don’t have a grasp of these concepts of leadership and what effect they will have upon you and your business building efforts then you could be committing yourself to a slow death in network marketing industry before you even start.

In business, whether it’s online or offline business, how you begin will often determine how you will end up. So it makes sense to begin with the end in my mind by making right choices in regard to leadership from the very start.

Three Aspects To Leadership

The three factors regarding leadership that affect your MLM career are these…

Leadership Selection – How to select the right leader before you start Leadership Appointing – Appoint yourself as a leader from the word go Leadership Training – Teaching others to fish

We will break these down by looking at these individually starting with the first point…

Leadership Selection

Network marketing both online and offline is very much a game of leadership. I can’t begin to tell you from personal experience how much a leader can either make or break your MLM business efforts.

There is an old saying that you hear from time to time regarding network marketing that goes like this… “even though you are in business for yourself you are not in business by yourself”.

Now people usually tout that in the positive to mean that you will not be left alone to fend for yourself which is a huge advantage when you are dealing with MLM. But if you have the wrong person above you that you have to deal with when you are a new person to your business or the industry as a whole it can hinder greatly your chances of success.

It’s not enough that you chose to be involved in network marketing purely by the company that someone is waving in front of you. There are many more factors that will contribute to your success than the company you decide to join.

Even though the company may be looking awesome and the chances of making a huge income can look very real you still need to be considering the leadership ability of the person that is prospecting you.

Consider this… There is a huge difference between a successful online network marketer and a successful offline network marketer. You may be getting prospected by the top of the company Diamond distributor in an offline business but that person could be a total flop with online MLM.

I have seen this many times over. There are heaps of very successful MLMers in the offline world that can barely use a computer let alone lead you to online MLM success.

There is a video I see occasionally on YouTube from a successful network marketer (top earner in his particular company) and I can tell by looking at his website and how he has configured his YouTube category & tag information that he has no clue on how to market online.

And if you are drawn in by what he says in the video, that as a top producer he can help you get to where you want to go, that you will end up either stuck in the water on how to use internet technology to market your business or this leader will be taking you back to the old school way of prospecting your friends and family and making lists of people you know.

Are you starting to see what I mean here about making the right choice in who you follow? It’s absolutely vital to your success.

Enough said there. So what should you be looking for in a leader if you are looking at online MLM success? Do they understand how to work with Web 2.0 internet technology? By this I don’t just mean sending out some emails, browsing websites or posting videos. I mean a strong grasp of some of the finer points of using the technology.

Here are a list of some of the things that I have discovered…

Can they create & run effective marketing funnels for different campaigns?

Do they know how to setup and work with Autoresponders?

Do they understand the technology behind a Blog and are they using one in their marketing campaigns?

Do they have a grasp of social bookmarking and how that benefits your business and brings in leads?

Do they work with multiple information channels such as FriendFeed, Twitter & Twhirl and can they use them to control communication with their downlines?

Do they know how to stay in touch with what is happening in the online MLM market by utilising RSS feeds?

Are they building multiple businesses simultaneously using technology AND selling product at the same time?

Do they know how to setup and run profitable Google Adwords campaigns?

You get the idea here. Now I would just like to mention here that they DO NOT necessarily have to be doing ALL of those things. But I would expect that they should be involved a fair bit of it. After all if you can work with part of it then you should be able to easily work with all of it.

An online MLM leader needs to be proficient in many aspects of the technology before they can even begin to lead you in the direction you want to go.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s not enough that they already have an MLM business or that they tout offline MLM success. And it’s not enough that they wave YouTube Videos in front of you that tell you they are the best. You need to be checking out their marketing channels and how they use them to determine if a prospective leader is worth following or not.

Leadership Appointing

This is a very interesting part of MLM leadership and once again the decision you make right now before you even begin will definitely effect where you end up in this business. And for many people it’s a hard one to get their head around.

To become HUGE in this industry you must appoint yourself as a leader right from the get go. In your heart, mind & soul it is you that has to step up to the plate and confess to yourself that you are a leader… and you had better believe it as well.

Let’s have a look at this in more detail.

When I was thirty years old I decided I wanted to quit my job working as an electrician and do something else that was a little more “me”. So I decided to check out the papers to see what was going around that was in my field but wasn’t actually doing what I was currently doing, which was working on the tools as a tradesman.

One day I noticed a job as a Supervisor in an electrical engineering firm in Sydney and all I needed was electrical experience which I had. So I applied for the job and landed it. Now the thing is that I had never worked in any form of management prior to this so it was a whole new field for me.

On the first day of the job I was taken down to meet the people that I was responsible for and was introduced as the new Supervisor in the department. This job turned out to be one of the best I had ever had and I discovered that I had a real flair for leadership and management. I loved that job and did exceptionally well at it.

But Here Is The Point…

Someone in authority appointed me as the leader, the person responsible for everything in that department and that from that day forward the people that worked there were accountable to me as the person in charge.

You see I was appointed by a higher authority and like it or not the people that already worked there had to answer to me. They had no choice in the matter. It was an order from management. Thankfully it all went well for them and me and I had a party working with these people.

Now when it comes to network marketing and MLM leadership, there is nobody around that is going to appoint you as the leader. No one is going to tell your prospects or downline that they are accountable to you and that they have to answer to you.

No one is going to introduce you to them as the leader. If you are going to be a leader you have to appoint yourself. You are the one who is required to step up and say to yourself and convey it to your team “I am a leader and I am worth following”. And you had better believe that you are a leader that is worth following.

You are a leader when you decide you are. Nobody else is going to tell you when you are valuable enough to actually share your value. You decide when you are valuable enough to share your value.

MLM leadership is all about you deciding what you are going to be. If you are going to be a leader then you have to be the one who appoints yourself, who stands out among the crowd and says to the world… “I am here, follow me or get out of my way”.

It’s that simple folks and if you cannot make the change in your paradigm, if you are timid in anyway, shape or form then your people will pick up on it and they will struggle to follow you.

Don’t get me wrong here about that though. If you are working with the right leader above you and you are hungry to learn then there is no reason why you cannot master this. But this is something that you will have to establish in your life if you haven’t already if you want online MLM success.

As part of my job as a leader I like to work with other leaders or people who want to become leaders. I like to build people and I have had years of experience in doing it.

There is no greater joy than seeing people I work with grow and flourish in their work.

Leadership Training

As previously mentioned network marketing is simply a game of leadership. Leaders working with other leaders who work with other leaders and so on. Your business will not grow without other leaders reproducing what you do.

There are two ways for you to establish leadership in your business…

1. Recruiting leaders
2. Training leaders

Recruiting leaders will be an automatic process through your marketing materials when others perceive that you have those skills in you. What is going on inside of you will flow out to others.

But even though you will attract other leaders into your business you are still going to have to train them or others that wish to become leaders.

Leadership in this business is simply teaching others what they need to do in order to generate the success that you have. Or to quote the phrase…

You can’t teach others to fish until you can fish yourself

It’s a well known fact that within the network marketing industry, most leaders that will come into your business are not those that you have recruited but rather those that you have worked with and trained yourself.

Leadership training is how your business will grow from a small business into a large and stable business. It’s a huge subject that is too big to cover in this series so we wont discuss it now.

However the goal of this lesson has been simply this… you need to have a grasp of the three aspects of leadership right from the start because it is crucial to the future of your business building ability.